


sky-blue dreams and blood-orange ice cream

by iridescent



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Dreams, Dreamwalking, Initial Underage, M/M, Mentions of War, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, Origins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-31
Updated: 2012-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescent/pseuds/iridescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur dreams in muted shades of black, white and silence. Eames dreams in vivid unrelenting technicolor, uninhibited by the limits of convention or plausibility. They meet in a dream, aged fifteen and eighteen, amidst white snow and black lamp posts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sky-blue dreams and blood-orange ice cream

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted to my journal at the end of 2010. I've left it mostly unchanged though the neurotic part of me desperately wants to chop and change certain segments.

Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and grey  
Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul  
Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils  
Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land  
– Don McLean, “Vincent”

## Prologue

_Arthur dreams in muted shades of black, white and silence. Nameless people brush past him soundlessly, their faces obscured in shadows and hollows. They smile at him vaguely, as if they know him, but never approach him. It is both reassuring and disconcerting. He walks miles on searing asphalt roads and eventually finds himself at a deserted gray beach, feet sandy and blistered. The sun is a patchy charcoal smudge in a darkening graphite sky. He watches as it is inevitably devoured by the grainy, faraway horizon._

_Eames dreams in vivid unrelenting technicolor, uninhibited by limits of convention or plausibility. In these dreams (dreams that are much more believable than the reality he wakes up to), the sky is fertile green, the grass is deep blue and he watches in fascination as his hands ripple from red to indigo to yellow to silver. He stumbles along quaint cobbled streets and through abandoned fields of lush rose-coloured wheat, calling out till his voice rasps and his eyes blur._

***

He is six and three-quarters, has sandy hair (rapidly darkening) and will not be 'Eames' for several more years. Sitting at the burnished kitchen table, feet not yet touching the floor, he draws with new wax crayons – one of many gifts from a father he has never seen. His mother gazes out the window, smoking, silver Dunhill lighter clasped in one hand. Her coppery hair is pulled back into a messy bun, a few loose strands framing her weary face.

Much later ( ~~after her death~~ ), he will remember this fleeting moment in disjointed fragments: faded yellow curtains dancing in the warm afternoon breeze, the pungent smell of perfume and charred pastry and his beautiful too-young mother with her rough hands and bitten-raw nails and white Virginia Slim between red lips.

He will never be able to remember her face.

"Mama?" he begins, tentatively.

He is still too young to understand why, but is observant (too observant) and instinctively knows she is sad because her mouth is harsh around the edges and her eyes are not-here and she has burnt pie.

She looks up at him, mouth widening into a tight, fake smile. He can always tell, though she doesn't know that. "Yes, dear?"

"What colour is sky?"

She walks over to stand beside him, running her fingers lightly through his newly cropped hair. He shivers. As always he had been terrified of the snipping sound of the scissors just behind his ears, trembling fingers immediately reaching for her safe and warm hand.

Afterwards, she had kissed his cheeks dry and bought him a strawberry ice cream. They had walked back home hand-in-hand and he had wondered how she managed so easily to make everything better.

 _"_ Blue, darling." Her voice is gently amused. _"_ You know that."

"I know," he agrees solemnly. What he wants to say (but perhaps not in as many words) is _But my sky is red. Sometimes yellow. Sometimes green like your eyes, mama. Sometimes blue, too. But only sometimes._

He thinks of when he had first told her, how her arms had tightened around him momentarily and her smile had slipped. He thinks of school and how the girl sitting next to him at craft time had laughed (though not unkindly) at his bright green sky and offered to share her blue-coloured pencil with him. He thinks of how everyone else had drawn blue skies and green grass and red flowers.

He picks up the blue crayon.

***

Arthur waits for days that are gray and frosty, days where all he can see from his fogged-up window are pristine white slopes and solitary black lamp posts. He will pad carefully down the creaking stairs into the empty kitchen, scratch the purring tabby cat behind her ears and wait for the crackling radio to somberly announce a snow day.

Arthur waits for days where he wakes up feeling hot and cold, days where it hurts to swallow and his forehead pounds with the beginnings of flu and fatigue. His grandmother (stern and unyielding at the best of times) will feel his feverish brow, allow him to stay in his pajamas for the rest of the day and force scalding, bland soup down his protesting throat.

On these days, he won't have to go to school.

He despises school, despises the monotony of lessons, the loud and squealing children, the cheerful yellow walls.

Instead, he curls into the sagging couch beside the warm bulk of his shy, gentle grandfather. Arthur's grandfather has strong gnarled hands and wears immaculately pressed three-piece suits every day, no matter the weather. As a very young child, Arthur used to worry that grandpa might burst because so many words went in but so few came out.

They nibble on crisp almond biscuits fresh from the oven and watch silent black and white films from yesteryear in quiet companionship. Arthur's favorite film is _Broken Blossoms_. It is hopeful and understated and ethereal and tragic. He is utterly spellbound by the haunting musical score, the fragile kinship between Lucy and the Yellow Man and the poignant innocence of sepia-hued Lillian Gish, with her expressive eyes and long wispy curls.

She is the most beautiful person he has ever seen.

At the age of eleven Arthur is solemn and intelligent, rarely smiles and spends his time immersed in dusty, leather-bound tomes and climbing the crabapple tree in the backyard. He has inherited his father's poor eyesight and grandfather's dimples, is besotted with Lillian Gish and begins to slick his hair back like Richard Barthelmess.

***

_He leaps off the edge of the rotting pier, plunges through icy tangerine water and promptly resurfaces, gasping for air. The surrounding forest is eerie, isolated. The lake swirls around him, seemingly bottomless. A flock of birds (each striped in candy and peppermint) fly overhead._

_Eames has sound, and colour and beauty, but no one to share it with._

_Later, as he sits dripping on the wooden planks with the sepia sun warming his back, an idea unfurls in his mind like the slowly awakening petals of a flower in bloom._

_He will escape._

## I

Snow, pristine and white, settles upon the somnolent city. Black lamp posts line the pavements, illuminating briefcases and shop windows and Arthur. It is all very film noir, he supposes. People brush past him hurriedly, sparing him a cursory glance but nothing more. Arthur wonders, without really caring, if they ever really go anywhere. Or are they are doomed to forever wander the streets, an army of ants in a Mobius Strip of false purposefulness and exaggerated urgency?

He is walking through the town square, a bittersweet melody on his cracked lips and neatly folded diagrams of buildings (shrines, townhouses, sky-scrapers) spilling from his coat pocket, when he hears it.

A rumble that could be far-off thunder.

The colorless sky ripples, as if it wants to rip open. Arthur shivers, a sudden chill creeping into his bones, exhaling clouds of white. And yes, there it is again; he hears the crack of electricity, the whine of the wind, the crunch of boots on snow.

Sound.

The thing is, Arthur doesn't dream in sound.

He frowns.

Something feels not-right, off, inexplicably _changed_.

It is then that he stops. Because there is someone standing in the middle of the snowy street, caught between white lamplight and black shadow. A lean teenager, some years older than Arthur, glaringly out of place in his washed-out boxers and disheveled hair and bare feet.

He is also _**in color**_ but horribly wrong; he has garish pink hair and pale green skin and an electric-blue mouth that is twisted into a wondering half-smile.

A lilting (British?) voice gravelly with sleep and disorientation murmurs, “Huh. This is certainly different.”

He raises an arm to rub at his eyes blearily and the frayed vest rides up to reveal thick lettering, tattooed in glimmering purple and gold, just above the ridge of his right hipbone.

Arthur can only gape.

Because there is Sound.

Because there is Color.

Because there is a strange, strikingly beautiful person in his dream.

What's worse is that the people populating Arthur's dream don't even stop or look; they simply continue on their way, expressionless and single-minded. Most likely since Arthur seems to be the only person to have actually noticed the sheer incongruity of the situation, the stranger (invader, imposter, intruder) turns to him.

“Hello,” he smiles. Though 'smile' seems inadequate when faced with crooked teeth and heightened laugh lines and mouth stretched wide. Impossibly bright, almost as if he is genuinely pleased to see Arthur, as if he _knows_ him. “I'm Eames. Who're you?”

Arthur ignores that (what sort of a name is that, anyway) and demands a much more pressing question.

“How did you get here?” His voice comes out hoarse from years of disuse, rough and rasping around the words.

For a brief instant Eames' orange eyes flicker, but he just shrugs smoothly.

“I don't remember. This is a dream after all, isn't it?”

He grins at Arthur, shamelessly smug and presumptuously friendly, snowflakes caught in his hair and frost on his eyelashes. It is fucking freezing, though it seems Eames hasn't noticed. He stands there in his boxers and vest and bare feet and doesn't even flinch. Not that Arthur cares, of course.

“Well, go back to where you came from,” he scowls, certain that this ‘Eames’ is some rogue scrap of dreamspace; he must be some overlooked fragment of unrefined, unshaped, unruly subconscious. It has happened before.

Eames arches an eyebrow. “That's a bit rude, kid.”

“I'm not a kid,” Arthur snarls back childishly before he can help it, and Eames has the gall to laugh at him. Arthur hates being laughed at.

“All right, whatever,” Eames placates easily, shrugging. Arthur grits his teeth and rams his fists into his pockets. Because it is not all right, not at all. This situation is unprecedented, unplanned, unknown, unsafe.

He turns abruptly, intending to remove himself from the situation. He needs to just get the hell away; he needs to calm down and organize his frazzled thoughts. Because if Arthur takes a few deep breaths and concentrates, maybe Eames will disappear and things will go back to normal. Back to black, white and silence.

“Hey, wait.” But there is a strong callused hand curling around Arthur's wrist and then Eames is staring at him, eyes comically wide, gaze far too intense and searching.

“Your name?” he grinds out insistently, grip tightening. It's starting to hurt (not that he would ever admit to that) and Arthur can smell alcohol and cinnamon and Eames' skin is warm, very warm.

Normally; Arthur might snap a bitchy _screw you,_ wrest his arm away and continue on his way. But he can't. Arthur is hardly timid and never tongue-tied. But this boy, this man, this green-skinned pink-haired apparition, makes him unaccountably nervous.

He stares into silver eyes and opens his mouth to say-

***

Eames rolls out of bed with an undignified yelp, an unfamiliar name reverberating around his skull. The alarm clock blinks two-fifty-two in fiery red. His head throbs dully from the cocktail of cheap vodka and stale pizza from the house party earlier that night and his eyes refuse to stay open.

Cursing, he crawls around in the dark, trying to feel for a pen, a pencil, a marker - something, anything. Because the name seems important.

Like some sort of tenuous victory.

When he wakes up again (sprawled ungainly on the carpet, face crushed against his sketchpad) at a more civilised hour, stiff and dehydrated and still feeling like shit, he has forgotten the name entirely.

Fuck.

Frowning, he reaches for a cigarette and a stub of pencil. Dim morning light filters between the ratty curtains as he sketches from hazy, undeveloped slivers of memory. A sharp, pointed face. Coarse dark hair falling messily into sullen eyes framed by thick-rimmed glasses and fierce eyebrows. He had been young too, a skinny thing of about fifteen or so. A kid, really.

Eames chuckles wryly and exhales, plumes of white smoke spiralling up to the cracked ceiling.

In that instant (when his hand had tightened around a seemingly brittle wrist and the black-and-white boy had been suddenly, weirdly, imbued with tints of plum and chocolate) Eames had suddenly, depravedly, bizarrely _**wanted**_. Wanted to worm his way under that pallid skin. Wanted to push and prod and irk until something snapped and gave in. Wanted to whisper secrets into the arch of his neck and bite into his trapezius muscle. Wanted to see him smile.

Well. _Fuck_.

It is only two hours later, whilst he is attempting and failing to scrape lumpy pancake batter off the countertops, that Eames becomes aware of the barely legible yet generous scrawl inscribed haphazardly into the peeling and whitewashed wall beside the previous tenant's ancient stove.

It says – in indelible blue crayon – _Arthur_.

***

Arthur still despises school.

He seethes and paces and bides his time, waiting restlessly for the day he can be free from the stifling lessons and loud, giggling adolescents and flaking yellow walls. He skips class and gets into fights and still, still, they turn a blind eye. Because Arthur is brilliant, or so they say. An asset. A trophy. A legacy. A guaranteed success. Everyone expects Great Things of him.

And yet.

The thought of a dreary nine-to-five desk job and water-cooler gossip fills him with a numb, helpless sort of despair. He wants _**more**_ : wants pure creation, wants the heady thrill of adrenaline coursing beneath his skin, craves challenge and intrigue, yearns to be the best – the very best.

Arthur scrubs at his red-rimmed eyes and feels a headache coming on. It is all that fucking Eames' fault. He keeps showing up in Arthur's dreams, perversely unapologetic and annoyingly persistent, disrupting all rationality and structure with his irrepressible energy and blatant disregard for personal space and mind-melting smiles.

So Arthur wakes up feeling far from refreshed, with an irresistible urge to punch someone. He downs mugfuls of bitter sugary coffee, becoming increasingly irritable and jittery as a consequence.

It is unprecedented.

Arthur is never irritable.

Not outwardly, at least. Irritation is a sign of a lapse in control. Arthur is always in control. Arthur is also impassive, unperturbed, efficient, responsible, perhaps even aloof. All these are perceptions of himself held by others that Arthur has invested much time in cultivating, in propagating. It is safer that way.

No one is allowed to see the Arthur who has gruesome nightmares about the car crash that killed his parents, the Arthur who wakes up with terrible bed hair, the Arthur who is barely functioning till he has had two cups of coffee and a steaming shower, the Arthur who invariably cries at the end of _Broken Blossoms_ , the Arthur who lives through each day just to be able to build cities each night.

No one.

Not quiet, mellow Jack. Jack with delicious skin and long lashes. Jack who plays the violin with elegant fingers and to whom Jascha Heifetz is akin to god.

Not even sympathetic, effervescent Maya. Maya who has sky-blue nails, reads Wordsworth for fun and may be a little bit in love with Jack. But then, most people are a little bit in love with Jack even though Jack will probably never be fettered down to just one person.

And most certainly not hapless, timid Nick. Nick who blinks too much when he is nervous and hangs around them because Arthur was nice to him that one time when they were six and some bastard kid had made him cry. Despite his reservations, Arthur had shared his precious almond biscuits and shown him how to build castles in the sandpit. Nick had finally smiled, eyes liquid and half-hopeful.

But Eames? Eames makes Arthur veer precariously close to being out of control.

And that thought is terrifying.

***

Arthur doesn't like him, Eames muses, chewing on his pen.

The lecturer drones on about Jungian archetypes and the girl sitting next to him has been trying to catch his eye for the past half hour.

He ignores them both.

Eames is used to being liked. It has always been unfairly easy, with his natural charm and smile and personality. People like him, people are drawn to him, people are attracted to him. It has always been the case; he thinks nothing more or less of it.

Now, for perhaps the first time, he _wants_ someone to like him back but Arthur quite obviously doesn't. Not if the glaring and avoidance is anything to go by.

There is a certain sort of power in being able to study people and their characteristics, in being able to adeptly adopt their mannerisms, quirks and idiosyncrasies. He finds it fascinating – to observe and watch and ultimately emulate. He can mimic almost anyone he pleases, much to the amusement of his fellow students in Footlights.

But Arthur is something of an enigma. Arthur is difficult to fathom, Arthur is not as straight-laced as Eames initially assumed. Arthur often has bloodied lips and skinned knuckles and yet wears immaculate sweatervests and perfectly pressed slacks. Arthur scarcely smiles but has a hint of dimples about his cheeks.

He knows, of course he knows, that the good and decent and moral thing to do would be to take the very blatant hint and stop disrupting Arthur's dreams. To return to his own dreamspace with its vivid technicolor and quaint cobbled streets and icy tangerine water and unbearable, infinite loneliness. Still-

(Freddy Simmonds raises a hand and the class groans collectively.)

Still, the simple and rather selfish fact of the matter is that Eames does not want to be good and decent and moral.

It's not just that he's intrigued by Arthur and his elaborate, skilfully crafted dreams.

It's not just that he wants to see him smile.

It's not even that he wants (worryingly) to kiss him.

What it is is that he wants to get to know Arthur. As a person.

***

Faceless people mill about him, close but never touching. Spherical droplets splinter against his white umbrella and speckle the pavement black. As always Arthur is able to effortlessly pick out Eames in the crowd, facing away from him, drenched in rain and a kaleidoscope of color. His flimsy T-shirt is plastered to his glistening skin but he is making no effort to seek shelter.

Arthur is not quite sure what to make of Eames. He knows Eames is not real; he is just a figment of Arthur's own subconscious. Even so there is something fascinating, intriguing, beguiling about him.

Despite the cautionary coil of unease churning in his gut, Arthur falls into step beside him. Eames blinks down at him bemusedly, eyelashes wet and spiky.

Arthur pointedly hands him the umbrella (Eames is taller) and tries not to stare at the jade tattoo snaking down his sinewy arm. Their hands graze accidentally, and Arthur's fingers flash a magnificent scarlet at the point of contact before returning to their customary pallor. He thinks he sees Eames stiffen, ever so slightly.

Wordlessly they walk miles on sodden asphalt roads, Eames gingerly concentrating on holding the umbrella more over Arthur than himself and Arthur flustered by the dawning comprehension that he can actually _**see**_ tendrils of turquoise heat seeping from Eames' slippery skin.

Eames is unusually silent (thankfully) but seems unable to prevent his preposterous color scheme from infusing into the surrounding black and white landscape. The umbrella spins through all shades of the color wheel and the sky is smeared with rust and clay. Waterlogged trees rustle from coal to ocher and they step through lilac puddles that reflect a watery Arthur and a sun-skinned Eames.

Arthur is startled, and mildly dismayed, to find he does not mind the myriad of colors quite so much. Because everything is actually rather...

...beautiful.

***

When Eames holds onto a part of Arthur (he thinks hand would be optimistic so instead opts to grab a handful of crisp, impeccable shirt) Arthur is able to enter Eames' dreamspace.

And of course they've both noticed, but never verbally acknowledged, that whenever Eames happens to brush against him, Arthur changes colour too. His bleached skin and dark hair coalesce into cool blues and lush greens and fervent reds; Eames does his best not to stare. 

He is certain Arthur could dream in colour too (“come on, it's easy, you've just got to focus”) but Arthur refuses to try. For once, Eames doesn't try to push or prod or irk. Perhaps because the way he says _**no**_ is tinged with vexation and resolution but beneath all that, blatant fear. Perhaps because, in spite of all his supposed control, his lips compress and his eyes shutter and his nails bite into his palms.

Perhaps.

In any case, at the edge of a decomposing wooden pier, Eames gives in and sighs _forget it_ and doesn't mention it again. Arthur glances at him swiftly, with startled eyebrows and a grateful almost-smile. Dusk steeps into his milky skin and he fiddles with the rusting nails embedded in the weathered planks, looking anywhere and everywhere but at Eames.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Eames begins to think (hope) Arthur does not mind him so much after all.

## II

There is a dilapidated library in Eames' dreams, hidden down a winding alleyway between a quaint antique shop and a cheerful bakery. A lazily whirring fan throws patterns of sunbeams and shadow upon crammed, overflowing bookshelves and treacherous, disintegrating step ladders.

Eames reads out vociferously from a tattered dog-eared P.G. Wodehouse, unsettlingly precise in his impersonations. Arthur wanders amidst the towering shelves, running his fingertips reverently along the spines of stout, moth-eaten tomes that were his childhood confidantes. His fingers come away dust-free and Arthur snorts, unsurprised.

The lilting, velvety voice has died away and Arthur turns around to see Eames looking at him, lips quirked slightly.

“What?” he says, immediately defensive.

“Hm? Oh, nothing, nothing,” Eames replies sweetly, ducking behind the book.

Arthur resumes walking between the shelves, trying very very hard to ignore the weight of Eames' gaze prickling at his spine. The bastard is still surreptitiously watching him over the top of his book, amused and pleased and _fond_.

Finally, Eames resumes reading aloud. It is oddly reassuring in the dim, stale gloom.

A lethargic, pensive voice drawls- “-there are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself “Do trousers matter?-"

Arthur wakes up with the beginnings of what may be a smile blossoming on his lips.

***

They build castles on the beach because Eames goads Arthur into it. Toddling black-and-white children watch as they work, shy and curious. Eames, bare-chested and with windswept hair, grins and splashes them with sea water that sparkles magenta in his hands. They run away, squealing and laughing, with Arthur left to wonder how the hell he does it.

Eames delights in humming unhelpful, obnoxious things like "Don't you have any imagination, Arthur?” They're on shaky, tenuously civil ground these days but he still feels that urge to push and prod and irk, even though he knows by now that Arthur is not snappable.

Arthur's brows furrow behind the sunglasses stolen from Eames but valiantly continues ignoring his jibes.

Unintentionally, he sees the long raised scar running across Arthur's abdomen. Old, somewhat faded, much paler than the surrounding skin. He doesn't ask, noticing the way Arthur's fingers tighten around the cheap plastic bucket.

Eames' castle is sumptuous and illogical, with crumbling pastel turrets and a seaweed dragon. Arthur's castle is more a fortress: highly detailed, impenetrable and accurate in its dimensions.

He admires the painstakingly etched, paradoxical staircase that circles the inside of Arthur's castle walls. Arthur blushes beneath his sunburn and mumbles something, nearly inaudible, that sounds suspiciously (wondrously) like “thank you.”

***

Jack clears his throat, bow stilling.

Frenzied strains of Paganini’s caprice no. 24 linger in the cramped music room, eventually settling in the musty cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling and the breath marks on the frosty windowpane.

Arthur looks up from his geometry proofs quizzically. Jack practices manically each day with a firm and unbending resolve that is astounding simply because he is so laid-back about all other aspects of life. More than anything, Jack yearns to achieve virtuosity (“Jascha Heifetz again,” Maya groans, rolling her eyes) and Arthur can appreciate that sort of dedication. So he sits in – sometimes listening, sometimes reading, sometimes doing homework, never talking.

It is their routine: tranquil, certain, soothing.

Jack smiles and Arthur is again reminded why he can have anyone he wants.

“So, who is it?”

“Who is what?” he replies, a tad impatiently. Jack is interrupting their routine.

Arthur wouldn't say he is _pedantic_ about it (no matter what Nick mumbles, and what do you know, it seems Nick's actually developing a backbone these days), but he craves order and symmetry in his waking life because nowadays his dreams are anything but orderly or symmetrical.

Is that really too much to ask?

Jack shrugs languorously, carefully disinterested, cracking his knuckles. “Maya thinks you're seeing someone.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “Why would she think that?”

“Aren't you getting some, though?”

“ _What._ ” Arthur practically chokes, instantly crimson, accidentally scattering graph paper and protractors onto the floor. “Who even says things like that, you dick!?”

Jack is unperturbed, still wary. “You just seem overly happy these days.”

“Doesn't mean I'm fucking someone, asshole,” Arthur growls, reaching for his calculus textbook.

In apparent contrition, Jack begins to play Hymne à l'amour (the sneaky bastard) and Arthur is mollified, only just. His skin tingles and his face burns and all he can think about is fucking Eames and then _fucking_ Eames and fuck fuck fuck, how did this happen?

Arthur waits patiently till Jack puts down the violin. It is then that he flings the textbook in the general direction of his head.

***

It is four months and one week to the day they met.

So what if Eames has been counting?

He sits cross-legged in a field of nodding cornflowers and lustrous buttercups, sun scorching the nape of his neck. Scowling critically down at the essay due tomorrow, he chews on his pockmarked pen and groans because it is shit, complete shit.

Pressing his chin into Eames' shoulder, Arthur (smelling distractingly of roasted coffee beans and sun-warmed laundry) asks in aggrieved, barbed tones why Eames insists on writing by hand when a) his writing is barely legible and b) word processors have a spell check function.

Eames hums non-committally, fumbling for the silver lighter in his pocket; its edges are smooth and untarnished in a dream. He can fucking spell, of course he can. It's just more fun this way. He flicks the thumbwheel once, twice, and smiles grimly as the paper catches alight.

It is worth it to hear Arthur's sharp gasp (Eames shivers at the warm puff of breath on his neck) and the low, disbelieving murmur of “what the hell Eames, that was actually decent.”

Grinning, Eames ruffles his salt-matted hair and Arthur glowers up at him, frustrated and utterly gorgeous. Sunlight paints his cheekbones red and his eyes are hooded and opaque behind those black-framed glasses. There is a new, ugly bruise on his jaw and Eames wonders if Arthur is actually some sort of juvenile delinquent. He almost laughs, because perhaps it wouldn't surprise him after all.

Wisps of noxious blue-tinged smoke curl up into a teal sky.

Eames' essay shrivels into a charred husk.

Arthur just sighs, shaking his head and pushing his glasses further up his nose.

Eames absent-mindedly resolves, _I will paint you. One day, when you least expect it._

***

They are sitting at the end of the rotting wooden pier, legs dangling over the edge and feet lightly skimming the murky depths, waiting for sunrise. Eames is laughing about something that really isn't funny when Arthur leans in and kisses him, soft and hesitant. They are both faintly bemused at that, but maybe they shouldn't be.

Eames' lips are chapped and Arthur thinks he tastes of toffee, the promise of rain on a distant tempestuous horizon and (irrationally, ludicrously, unexpectedly) home.

When it is over (in a too-fast, intoxicating instant) Eames just beams, brilliant and oddly shy, and looks so absurdly _happy_ that Arthur's throat constricts and he has to look away quickly. They remain sitting side by side, shoulders just brushing. The monochrome sky suffuses with color; green, crimson and amber leach into the shades of black.

Somehow, Eames' palm ends up resting on Arthur's fingers. Arthur squirms, flushes a deep dark violet and tries (perhaps not so subtly) to sneak a look through cherry red eyelashes at Eames who is stolidly watching the sky, sunlight playing across his daffodil yellow skin.

Arthur doesn't pull away, but he can't meet Eames' amused, tender gaze for a week after that.

***

Swallowing, Eames tugs at the knot of his tie and winces as the thick fabric cuts into the hollow of his throat. He runs a clammy palm through his hair, newly cropped, and tries to smooth the wrinkles out of his once crisp white shirt.

The meandering lanes are flecked with green-tinted sunlight and his polished shoes crunch horribly loud on soil and dead leaves. He treads past lush looming trees, slumbering angels overrun with moss and crumbling crosses surmounted by time and flowering weeds. Already besieged by nature, everything will inevitably be consumed by it.

The only other person he sees is a middle-aged woman, beautifully-cut black frock seemingly at odds with her boyish frame. She has bare knobbly shoulders (the shoulders of a girl) and spider trails of mascara crawl down her cheekbones. She smiles at him, tremulous and watery, a lonely ghost standing by a grave marker shaped as a grand piano.

Eames has walked past this same grave many times and knows, without needing to look, that the words carved into its side read _Sweet, thou art sleeping; cradled on my heart; safe in God's keeping; while I must weep apart._

 __Madame Butterfly.

He smiles back at her, and his eyes sting.

Finally he finds the modest grave, nearly obscured beneath climbing ivy and waving fronds of fern. Eames kneels down upon loamy earth, presses a kiss to the cool grey headstone and gently places the wilting bouquet of wild vibrant cornflowers at its base.

“How are you, mum?” He runs the tips of his fingers over the etched name and meaningless dates. “It has been a while, I know, I'm sorry.”

But she will forgive him; she always does.

Eames tells his mother many things, some inane and some profound. He talks of university life, his intention to join the army, painting and how he is still not quite sure what colour sky is. He imagines she would smile at that and enfold him in her emaciated arms.

All at once, he is enveloped in a whirlwind of blue, orange, white and black as a rainbow of Painted Ladies and Holly Blues flit out from beneath the ivy. It is breath-taking and strangely fitting.

Madame Butterfly, indeed.

(His mother had fallen in love with a Pinkerton too, and so had Eames been born – a boy named Sorrow, never to be called Joy.)

Even so, something like peace flutters in his chest today. They had been happy, Madame Butterfly and her son who had turned out to be more Joy than Sorrow.

Every year, they would watch as the fat furry caterpillars at the bottom of their garden would retreat into coffins of gold ( _oh sweetheart, don't be upset – they're only sleeping_ ) and wait for the day when, magically, a damp scrawny butterfly would emerge to beat its expanding wings and escape up up and up into the fathomless blue sky.

It is when he gets up to leave that he mumbles, breath faltering and trousers marred with streaks of mud, “You would like him, mum. You would like him a lot.”

## III

Time passes, as time must.  
  
Arthur ignores the warning signs and whispering doubts and halfhearted misgivings.  
  
It becomes so easy, so effortless, to find Eames building sand sculptures on a gray beach, walking to nowhere on asphalt roads, exchanging idle pleasantries with the people inhabiting Arthur's dreams or sketching in a field full of cornflowers and buttercups, sunlight and dew in his hair.  
  
At seventeen Arthur is slightly taller than Eames, has filled out a little and wears contacts when he can be bothered. Eames kisses him, open-mouthed and filthy, pushing him up against moldy bookshelves and whispering “happy birthday,” into his temple.  
  
Later, Eames traces the length of the fading silvery scar running across Arthur's abdomen and asks quietly, “Do you remember it?”  
  
Arthur takes a deep shuddering breath and says, “No, not really. I was asleep in the backseat.”  
  
Eames says nothing, simply lights a cigarette and exhales rose-colored columns of acrid smoke, all the while watching Arthur through lime-green eyes. And Arthur is grateful, because he has had enough of meaningless platitudes and well-intended pity.  
  
Before he can check what he is saying, he whispers into the soft secret skin at Eames' neck. “When I dream in color, I'm with them. And it's all I could ever want. But then, then, they always die. And I can never change it.”  
  
Arthur wakes up with searing cigarette kisses and phantom teeth marks branded into his skin. He splashes his face with icy water in an attempt to soothe the burn and realizes, hair sopping and skin still aflame, that he is screwed. Because, fuck, he is in a fucking _relationship_ with a figment of his own desperate, over-active, needy subconscious.  
  
Because Eames, Eames with the blinding smile and crooked teeth and continually changing eyes, can't be real. Because Arthur's parents, with their gentle smiles and warm embraces and sincere promises, are never real. Because Arthur always wakes up alone.  
  
He wants to ask – _What are we? What is this? **Are you real?** How can I be sure? _  
  
But never does.  
  
Because in that small irrational part of his mind, Arthur believes that if he says those words, Eames will smile at him, slow and sad and disappointed, and disappear forever.  
  
Much like that imaginary friend that no one but seven-year old Arthur could see. Much like those technicolor illusions of his parents who would hold his hand and kiss his brow and then disappear in a raging inferno of blackened flesh and screaming metal.  
  
And then there will be no more sound. No more color. No more Eames.  
  
So he closes his eyes and bites Eames because he can and carves vicious trails down his back just to know that he feels pain and decides to live this lie for as long as he can.  
  


***

Eames finds him walking along the expanse of deserted grey beach, shoes in hand and hair in his eyes. The sun beats down mercilessly, the sand is almost too hot to stand on, and Arthur is calf-deep in sea water; he hasn't even bothered to roll up his pants.

  
He waves and Arthur _smiles_ , radiant and uninhibited, stumbling a little as the tide tries to suck him out to sea. Ignoring the odd little clench in his chest, Eames waits as Arthur makes his way over (leaving wet footprints and tiny puddles in his wake) and then holds out two ice cream cones, already dripping down his hands. They are a shade of impossibly bright orange.  
  
“What **is** that?” Arthur stares and then, somewhat cruelly, smirks. “Are they even edible?”  
  
Frowning, Eames murmurs forlornly, piteously, “They were meant to be strawberry.”  
  
And it must have worked because Arthur laughs and gives in despite his reservations, accepting a fast-melting cone. Eames wraps his fingers around Arthur's (because he can, because he doesn't pull away, because it feels right) and bites into his own radioactively orange ice cream.  
  
“I guess it doesn't taste all that bad,” Arthur concedes reluctantly, licking at the edges of his cone. For all his fastidiousness, he eats ice cream as a child would – whole-heartedly and unrestrained and wholly engrossed in the sheer, perfect wonder of it all.  
  
Eames stares at him. Or rather, he stares at Arthur's mouth which is smeared a lurid blood-orange. Stares at the daub of orange on his sunburnt nose. Stares as he licks his peeling lips, but misses a spot.  
  
Suddenly self-conscious, Arthur flushes and tries to break away but Eames grapples him onto ashen sand, knees on either side of his thighs and kissing him hungrily.  
  
Then Eames' mouth is sticky with ice cream and he grumbles, “Bloody hell, Arthur,” and “You're not even doing it on purpose, are you?” and maybe he would answer (biting, teasing, sardonic) but Eames is kissing him again, insistent and bruising.  
  
Arthur's eyes flicker hazily. Eames murmurs nonsense into the juncture between his sandy shoulder and neck, licks a slow wet line to his exposed collarbone and Arthur keens in a high-pitched voice that can't be his.  
  
The ice creams lie overturned and forgotten, bleeding into the hot white sand.  
  


***

“Um, hey, Arthur?” Jack begins nonchalantly, placing the violin back in its case.

  
Arthur looks up from the notebook filled with hastily sketched shrines and sky-scrapers, pen paused in the midst of writing.  
  
“Don't think anything of it,” and here Jack laughs a little self-consciously, running his long fingers along gleaming varnish, looking anywhere but at Arthur. “But I was just wondering if-"  
  
He stops and Arthur stares because could it be that Jack, of all people, is nervous?  
  
“Yeah?” he prompts, curious and somewhat amused.  
  
“If you would go to prom with me?” The words come out flustered, hurriedly bitten off. And then Jack is _looking_ at him, hopeful and yearning.  
  
But all Arthur can do is gape, horribly aghast and utterly mortified, because what the fuck and oh god and no, no, no, this can't be happening.  
  
“Jack, I'm sorry, I can't, I—” and then he freezes. How the hell does he even begin to explain it?  
  
Jack is biting his lower lip and Arthur has never seen him look so uncomfortable, so unsure of himself. He realizes, far too late, that there is something more to this and _don't think anything of it_ had meant just the opposite.  
  
“Oh. All right. Um, no, yeah, that's fine-"  
  
“Wait, please, I-"  
  
But he's already gone and Arthur, left alone in the cramped music room with cobwebs and frost and whispers of Handel, feels like he has just done something unforgivable.  
  


***

Eames is observant (too observant) and notices when Arthur begins scrutinising him when he thinks Eames is not looking. When Eames attempts to meet his eyes, Arthur will either avert his gaze so quickly that Eames wonders if he has imagined it or will unabashedly stare back, features guarded and unreadable.  
  
They stand at the edge of a decaying wooden pier, surrounded by rustling forest and still water, flecked with mud-muck and algae and shining droplets. The splintering planks are cool beneath their bare feet. Arthur is watching him again; his eyes waver on and off to the slick tattoos on Eames' torso and arms, the muscle rippling across his shoulders, the dip of his spine, the sensuality of his mouth.  
  
He tries to ask but Arthur merely smiles, slow and sad and disappointed, and pushes him into the murky mint-coloured lake.  
  


***

Senior prom is one of the worst nights of Arthur's life. He very nearly does not go but his grandmother is so _happy_ as she blinks back a tear and admonishes him to be careful. His gentle, quiet grandfather is so _proud_ as he insists on buttoning up the lovely charcoal three-piece suit that once belonged to Arthur's long-dead father – Arthur's father who had the same poor eyesight and unruly black hair and who is very much alive in Arthur's dreams.  
  
So Arthur goes, ignoring the misgivings and doubts and warning signs.  
  
He should have known better.  
  
Jack won't look at him.  
  
It is Maya (gorgeous in a blue chiffon dress, glitter on her eyelids, the corsage from her boyfriend crushed between them) who hugs him tight and says, “Arthur, oh Arthur, try to understand, he needs time,” and “there is someone else, isn't there?” and “you should have just _told_ us.”  
  
But it is Nick (in his father's tux, mouth twisted into an ugly uncharacteristic sneer, a head taller than Arthur had thought) who shoves him like he means it and spits “you bastard,” and “haven't you fucking noticed, he's been moping after you for goddamn months,” and “if there really is someone else, then why the hell haven't we met them?”  
  


***

Arthur is seated on the grainy grey shore with glassy amorphous eyes and mouth compressed into a thin line. There is glitter on his chin and his hair sticks up in stiff, uneven tufts. His crumpled charcoal trousers are soaked through. The half-unbuttoned white shirt flaps in the sea breeze, revealing swaths of pale, pale skin and a long stripe of scar tissue.  
  
He won't look at Eames.  
  
There is something that must be panic tearing at his innards but Eames forces himself to sit down beside Arthur, hugging his knees to his chest, silent and watchful.  
  
The beach is eerily empty, peppered with abandoned pails and towels that have been trodden upon. Frothy waves crash on the foreshore with increasing frequency and there is the thick, onerous scent of a distant thunderstorm brewing on the wailing wind.  
  
What seems like hours later, Arthur begins to shudder, furious and broken, saying “I can't, I can't anymore” and “ **you're not real** Eames, you're not, how can you be,” and Eames' heart shatters into a thousand incandescent shards.  
  
He wraps his arms around bony shoulders saying “darling, _**darling I am**_ , I promise I am, why would you think otherwise?” over and over while Arthur sobs and sobs and tries to push him away ineffectually.  
  
When he has quietened Eames kisses away the scorching yellow salt trails on his cheeks even as Arthur dissipates in his arms, having woken up in his real body and his own life.  
  
Somewhere Eames can't follow.  
  


***

Arthur wakes up feeling awful. He is still in the charcoal suit but his shoes have been removed and placed neatly, lovingly, by the foot of his bed. Arthur tries to smile but what comes out is raw, twisted, vulnerable. He hates it, but can't help himself. He lost his self-control a long time ago.  
  
He thinks of Jack whilst stripping out of the stained, wrinkled, hardly white shirt. It falls into a graceless heap at his feet and for a moment, he wants to step on it.  
  
Jack.  
  
Jack who could one day rival Jascha Heifetz. Jack who plays Edith Piaf not because he likes it but because he knows Arthur does. Jack who let Arthur cry on him the first day back after the accident. Jack who has a beautiful smile. Jack who kisses boys behind the library and girls in the hallway. Jack who seems to like Arthur.  
  
It's not his fault, is it? He didn't ask for it, he didn't know, he didn't want this.  
  
But he didn't notice either, and that is perhaps far worse.  
  
How could he not fucking _notice?_  
  
Because dreams have become his reality?  
  
Or rather, because Eames has become his reality.  
  
Eames.  
  
Eames who writes ingenious essays that are peppered with atrocious, inconceivable spelling mistakes. Eames who smokes like he has a death wish. Eames who is good with kids. Eames who has the most beautiful smile. Eames who can recite entire books from memory. Eames who seems to like Arthur. Like _like_ Arthur.  
  
It should be enough.  
  
And yet.  
  
Arthur wakes up curled in a nest of blankets and Eames is not there beside him, face softened by sleep and legs purposefully entangled in Arthur's own.  
  
Arthur walks to school and Eames is not there to pick him up afterward in his beat-up car, smirking when Arthur kisses him in front of everyone.  
  
Arthur annotates his copy of Macbeth dutifully and Eames is not there, reading over his shoulder, offhandedly pointing out something clever that Arthur has missed.  
  
Arthur buys a strawberry ice cream even though he prefers vanilla and Eames is not there to murmur something inappropriate about lips and laugh infuriatingly as Arthur flushes and fumbles and stammers.  
  
Arthur has coffee with Maya, tentative and hopeful, and Nick, still angry and hurt. Jack's absence is painfully apparent and Eames is not there, arm snaking insidiously around Arthur's waist and smiling that smile while saying, “I'm Eames, by the way. Lovely to finally meet you. Please excuse Arthur; he likes to keep me a secret for his own unsavoury purposes.”  
  
Eames will never be there.  
  
Arthur realizes whilst brushing his teeth, mouth filled with minty foam and an aftertaste of cinnamon, realizes with unnervingly calm finality that now it will never be enough.  
  


***

The teenager at the express checkout has laugh lines around his eyes, shiny blond hair that curls around his ears and wonky teeth. He smiles at Eames somewhat cautiously and mumbles a polite, if bored, greeting.  
  
His name-tag gleams under the harsh lights – _Arthur_.  
  
A savage frisson of thrilled, nervous friction clutches at Eames' chest and he fumbles with the groceries when their fingertips touch over the twenty pound note. He practically tramples another checkout operator (a skinny kid with huge doe-eyes and never-ending cheekbones who squeaks and dodges out of the way) in his hurry to leave.  
  
Hands shaking on the wheel, he drives home in a daze. All he can think of is how _tangible_ supermarket Arthur had been, with his warm fingertips and white smile and angular jawline. Eames could have reached out and touched his stubbled cheek, never mind the possible fist in the face afterwards.  
  
He decides to break their unspoken rule, to grasp (his) Arthur and say _look, this may sound ridiculous but-_ and _I could find you, you know_ and _where are you?_ and _please_.  
  
And then kiss him, because Arthur is delightfully accommodating when kissed.  
  
But that night, Arthur is not there.  
Nor the next.  
Nor the next.  
Nor the week after.  
Nor the month after that.  
  
Eames understands whilst doing the dishes, up to his elbows in scummy dishwater and glittering soap bubbles; he understands with an unnervingly calm finality.  
  
 _I can't, I can't_ had been _I'm sorry, I'm sorry._  
  
 _You're not real_ had been _this won't last._  
  
 _How can you b_ e had been _so please let me go._

## IV

Arthur dreams of heat permeating through thin white shirts, black ice cream and careful butterfly-delicate kisses being pressed into the curve of his spine. He wakes up gasping and claustrophobic, skin burning with the imprint of smiling lips and two-day stubble.

The faucet won't turn but then again his hands are trembling uncontrollably, a mess of bitten nails and ink stains. Nick is knocking rapidly on the bathroom door, calling out drowsily, “Hey, are you okay in there?”

And Arthur is rasping back “yes, yes, I'm fine, don't worry,” even as he steps into the shower, still in his pajamas. The water is so cold; it stings as it sluices down his face, his arms, his heaving chest.

Half an hour later and they're practically breaking the door down.

There are more worried, urgent, pleading voices but Arthur can't hear what they are saying over the welcome, pounding roar of water, his fluttering heart and the mantra of _he's not real, he's not real, he's not fucking real._

His skin is still burning.

***  
Eames shifts restlessly, unlit cigarette between his lips and worn duffel bag by his feet. A light patter of drizzle coats his skin, his hair, his eyelashes, even seeping into the enlistment papers stuffed in his back pocket.

The cigarette is fast becoming limp, useless and soggy. His ancient leather jacket smells overpoweringly of wet dog and cheap aftershave. The coach is late.

It just isn't his fucking day.

He spins the battered Dunhill lighter in his palms; each scratch, dent and irregularity is intimately known and comforting in its certainty. Pettily, he wants to hate Arthur. Hate him for running away. Hate him for not saying something. Hate him for not giving them the chance to work it out.

Hate him for thinking that Eames was not fucking _**real**_.

(He stubbornly ignores the sibilant voice that croons that they had lived a thousand miles away from each other anyway, that they never stood a chance, that it was bound to end this way.)

Eames wants to hit the bastard, hard. And then kiss him, harder.

Hating would undoubtedly make it easier.

Metal strikes against flint.

Once, twice.

Once, twice.

It won't light; he _knows_ that. It hasn't been filled with fluid since his mother's death, that bleak and merciless day so many years ago. The coffin had shimmered golden like the chrysalises often seen in the bottom of their garden. He had wondered futilely, amidst salty grief and confusion and loss, if like those soon-to-be butterflies she was only sleeping too.

Silver rain had spattered, needle-sharp, against white headstones and black umbrellas.

He had been seven.

Seven and heart-broken.

Seven and world-weary.

Seven and alone.

Eames continues to turn the thumbwheel.

Once, twice.

The wick sputters and sparks, sputters and sparks.

Once, twice.

***  
Arthur stands in the bright spotless kitchen from his childhood and adolescence, eyes aching and neck stiff from the long drive back to what will always be home. His head throbs with algorithms and blueprints, hard rock on the radio and numerous road signs, the sickly stench of petrol and the slightly queasy sensation of carsickness.

The curtains are no longer that godawful shade of yellow but that's about the only difference besides the minute cracks in the plaster here and there. The aging tabby cat winds herself around his legs, there are almond biscuits cooling on a tray on the counter top and his grandmother (still stern, still unyielding) is humming an old love song as she arranges the flowers he brought with him in a chipped glass vase.

She is smaller than he remembered and seems almost frail in her demure frock and sensible shoes.

He wills himself to drink the last of the lukewarm coffee he picked up at some crummy gas station off the interstate and stares out the window. The wizened crabapple tree in the backyard is flowering in a halo of pearly pink and white blossoms. There are kids playing in the street. Clean white sheets flap on the washing line, surrounded by oases of buttercups and cornflowers.

It is all so laughably idyllic, so serene and tranquil and normal and perfect. Nevertheless, Arthur can’t help but feel apart from it – an outsider looking in.

An insistent honk momentarily disrupts the somewhat disquieting peace. A ripple of movement shudders through the tableau but instantaneously, everything (tree, kids, sheets) returns to as it was. As if nothing had ever happened.

“There goes your grandfather again, the stickler for punctuality,” his grandmother is saying, rolling her eyes in mock vexation, kitchen scissors snipping the stalk of a lily at a forty-five degree angle. “Can’t imagine _why_ he’s so agitated. Everyone knows the bride is always late.”

Croaking out something just intelligible enough to pass as a response and nodding mechanically in all the right places, he allows his mind to wander while letting the warm soothing tones of her dearly-loved voice wash over him.

“-ember how Jeannie wanted to marry _you_ when you two were children? And how _upset_ she was when Toby told her that cousins don’t get marri-”

Arthur picks at the coffee-stained paper cup and wonders why the walls seem so much closer than they did before. The knot of his silk tie is disconcertingly tight around his throat, much like a noose. He feels so very tired; it is a chafing, undignified weariness that whittles away at his bones and claws notches into his skin.

“Sweetheart, are you all right?” she is now murmuring, eyes shrewd and all too knowing, floury hand cupping his cheek as she used to do when he was a child and she wanted the truth out of him.

He just smiles at her (it is so easy) and lies.  
***  
Eames drifts through his early twenties in a haze of battered couches and grease-lined helmets, abandoned meals and radio static, stacked rifles and mud-encrusted boots. There is boredom and fear (always veiled, never spoken about), occasional letters from friends he will never bother to meet up with and family he barely knows, red dust and always, always, the inescapable heat.

He stumbles into dream-sharing unexpectedly; he is hand-picked for a covert, highly-classified joint venture with the US military. They are a select few; some are stoic and hardened, some are pathetically bright-eyed, others are coolly indifferent. All are preposterously unprepared for what they are getting themselves into.

They kill each other, over and over. Brutally and cruelly, with no sense of remorse or regret or loss, hot blood splattering their faces and the metallic tang of gunsmoke in their nostrils. Because, they are repeatedly reassured, they will wake up to stare at each other (shaking with adrenaline and disbelief and **life** and power) and everything will be all right.

But Eames, woken up by screaming and nightmares, questioning his sanity and brittle grip on reality, finds that he would very much like to empty a round into the fucking moron who thought this was a good idea.

He develops control; he learns how to tone down his dreams so that they resemble oversaturated photographs rather than some sort of drug-induced hallucination. His skies become blue, his grass crunches green, his flowers bloom red. These dreams are beautiful, unquestionably, but no longer feel like they belong to him.

He learns about the viciousness of projections but doesn't believe it till his jugular is ripped out by a young girl with smiling lips and sad, mad eyes. His commanding sergeant shouts at him for hours about carelessness and insubordination, but Eames is barely listening. He thinks instead of how, not once, had Arthur's projections ever touched him. Perversely, he daydreams about what it would have been like to be ripped asunder by those black-and-white apparitions, flesh scoured from bone and blood drip-dripping.

He is taught to forge in the midst of a bloody civil war by a soft-spoken American officer named Felix (not his real name either) who has red-gold hair, guileless blue eyes and an intricate tattoo on his upper left arm that Eames never really gets to see. He also looks barely a day past eighteen, though he is actually older than Eames by five years.

Or so he says.

Their first forgery together is invigorating and Eames considers whether he could do this forever. There is something supremely satisfying and overwhelmingly intoxicating in being able to be somebody, anybody, everybody and even nobody.

As they power down the PASIV, residual Somnacin and exhilaration thrumming through their veins, Felix smiles a shy half-smile and says, “Until next week then, Mr. Eames.”

***  
Arthur returns to the deserted gray beach, plagued by heartache and loss and what ifs.

The first month - blackened sand clings, cold and wet, to his bare white feet while the empty sky remains neutral and apathetic.

The third month - he walks the entire length of the desolate shore, finding shale and seashells and seagulls but not what (who) he is looking for.

The seventh month - there is grit in his eye and he brushes it away angrily.

The ninth month - he writes _happy birthday_ in the sand.

The twelfth month - he does not think of ice cream flavored lips and laughing eyes and callused fingertips tracing the angles of his jaw.

Of course he doesn't.

Eames is never there, not once in the three hundred and sixty five days that Arthur waits.

Of course he isn't.

Because he's not fucking real.

Arthur doesn’t go back.

Eventually, he stops dreaming at all.

***  
It happens once, just once, one day when they are off-duty and exploring the dreamspace in their own time, trying to pry into each other's subconscious.

Sometimes it is hide-and-seek, with Eames shifting into a dozen different personas (a small child clutching onto her mother’s skirt, an elderly gentleman seated on a park bench reading a book, a slim teenager carrying a science project to school) and Felix trying to identify him before the timer runs out.

Sometimes it is catch-me-if-you-can, with Felix ducking and dodging through winding streets and narrow alleyways and Eames in rowdy pursuit, carving his way through the tumultuous city (rearranging roads, turning buildings upside down, creating bridges from nothing), projections and consequences be damned.

This time it is kill-or-be-killed; Eames slips the Beretta out of the folds of his coat, blending into shadows and masonry, trailing a dumpy middle-aged woman with red-gold hair. It is then that he sees him - a young man just out of adolescence with dark floppy hair and crow's feet around his nearly-black eyes.

It is enough of a resemblance that Eames' mouth goes dry and he pushes clumsily through projections to seize Arthur ~~Felix~~ by the collar and kiss him, euphoric and reckless.

A gun discharges, but he is not sure who shot whom.

Eames wakes up shaking, with _fuck fuck_ _FUCK_ drumming into his skull. Felix is staring at him with wide eyes, looking very, very young. Feeling sick and wretched and pathetic, he stammers, “Felix, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry. I didn't mean to, I wasn't thinking-”

“It's fine,” Felix says quietly, pulling the cannula out of his wrist.

“Felix-”

“Eames.” His voice is soft and insistent. “It's really all right.”

He is reaching over Eames now - methodically removing the needle from his wrist and firmly pressing a cotton ball wet with disinfectant against the thin skin there. Eames hisses at the sting, watching through lidded eyes at the growing blush of scarlet blemishing the once pristine white.

“Shit. Do you always bleed this much?” Felix raises cornflower-blue eyes to Eames, brows drawn together, a muscle twitching in his jaw like he wants to smile. The material of his T-shirt is worn soft with a hundred too many washes and when his left sleeve hitches up, Eames catches a glimpse of black ink weaving down a corded bicep.

Swallowing back a curse, he grimaces. “Shut up, what I'm trying to tell you is-”

Felix leans in marginally and for a moment (a brief, insane, deluded moment) it seems as if he will brush his mouth against Eames' temple, feather-light.

Rolling his eyes, Felix laughs (forgiving, fond, exasperated?) at his befuddled expression and kicks the chair legs out from beneath him.

***

It is six forty-six on a Saturday morning and Arthur is peering into the bathroom mirror, prodding experimentally at the most recent bruise discoloring his jaw, when he hears the distinctive rap-tap-rap of knuckles on wood. Frowning, he stumbles into the dim hallway of the apartment, wrestling an oversized jumper over his head and listening for any giveaway sounds.

All would be quiet, if not for Nick’s muffled snoring from the second bedroom and the gentle susurrus of rain on windowpanes. But there it is again – a light knocking – faint and measured and strangely persistent.

Finally understanding, he unlatches the front door to find a tall young man standing awkwardly just beyond the threshold, violin case in one hand and the other trying to smooth back his wind-disheveled, rain-speckled hair.

Arthur blinks blearily, barely able to think through the cacophony of _holy shit_ and _he looks different._

“Want to hear something I’ve been working on?”

Just like that. No greeting, no how-are-you, no preamble, no bullshit, no forgiveness.

Arthur wants to say several things, most of them embarrassing and hackneyed and _embarrassing_.

Instead, he clears his suddenly dry throat, licks his split lip (tasting copper and redemption) and manages to string together something that vaguely resembles speech, hoarse and bluffing and **hoping** , “Only if you play Piaf after.”

***

They never talk about it after that; they never discuss why it happened or who it was that Eames thought he was kissing.

Not only because Felix doesn't want to.

But also because he knows Eames wouldn't be able to handle it.

He realises this, ridiculously enough, one sweltering and unending afternoon that is peppered with shrapnel and suffocating with the foetid, ashen stench of death.

Felix, fingers trembling minutely and spewing an incessant litany of curses, tapes up the pulsating gouge in Eames' abdomen. Plugging the leak, stemming the flow - speed being everything in this unforgiving wasteland. Fucking hilarious considering how squeamish Felix is around blood.

Eames wheezes out as much but Felix simply glares at him, telling him to shut the fuck up and concentrate on breathing.

On surviving.

Mitch lies face down in the hot dust, eyes unseeing, brain dribbling out of the bullet hole in his head. He has a family back home. A two year old daughter with dimples. Eames could cry from the hopelessness of it all.

Maybe Felix already is, tears and perspiration rolling down his blood-flecked face, rasping “fuck shit fuck, oh god, Mitch, fucking hell,” and “I can hear the Chinook, Eames, so just fucking stay awake till the medics get here.”

So Eames tightens his grasp around Mitch's nerveless gloves and says “okay, yes, okay, fuck it hurts Felix, fuck,” and takes shallow, excruciating mouthfuls of air and wonders what it might be like to die.

And then as the edges of his vision dissolve into darkness and he hears the dull jerky thwack-thwack-thwack of the helo's blades, he realises. Realises that in another life, in another time, he might have fallen in love with Felix.

In a heartbeat.

***  
Arthur graduates on a nondescript summer day with honors, a dual degree and three papers to his name. He expects to end up with that dreaded desk job and to spend the rest of his days bored, overqualified and obscenely rich.

Then.

A man with keen, secretive, slightly crazed eyes shakes his hand in the crowded, raucous college bar and offers him something no one else has. Something that Arthur has wanted (fuck that - _needed_ ) since he was fifteen.

Maya is singing along really badly to Presley on the jukebox, having completely outdrunk Nick, who is now slumped upon the table with his face crushed into his folded arms. Arthur downs his whiskey and imprints this moment in his mind. He may never see them again, and it is best that way.

It is Jack who leans in when the other two have been dragged away to the bar by some screaming third-years and asks casually, softly, eyes trained upon Dominic Cobb's departing back. “Are you planning to run away from us, Arthur?"

There is no betrayal or anger or even hurt in his voice. It's just a question. A question between long-time friends.

“Yes,” Arthur says because he is tired of lying and it is not worth it, not now. Perhaps it never was.

Jack smiles then, beautiful and rueful and not at all surprised. “Good luck then, bastard. Don't get yourself killed doing something heroic or Nick will cry.”

Arthur chokes out a laugh and feels something prickling at his throat and god, he's getting so damn soft. On a whim he angles Jack's chin towards him and kisses him on the side of the mouth, tasting rum and resignation and a hint of what they could have been, the two of them.

It is worse when Maya murmurs into his cheek as she comes over to say goodnight, entangled in Nick's arms. “I hope you find whoever it is you're holding out for, Arthur. I really do.”

Arthur doesn't cry but he could. Because he's holding out for a dream, a half-forgotten memory, an illusion with garish pink hair and pale green skin.

He drinks till he can't see.

Jack stays with him the whole time, hand interlaced in his, crooning _non, je ne regrette rien_ and Arthur is too far gone to point out that it is wholly inappropriate for the occasion.

A week later; he packs one light suitcase and disappears.

Sporadically, Arthur's grandfather will receive black and white postcards from Tokyo, Oslo, Colombo, Sydney. They overflow with cramped spidery writing about the weather, food, culture, sights and sounds. There is never a name, never a date, never an address to write back to, and certainly never any personal information.

Smiling a smile very like his grandson, he will wistfully add the most recent postcard into the false bottom drawer of his walnut desk and say to his wife, “Don't fuss, dear, he'll be back to visit next month.”

Because sometimes he is.

***

Felix is killed in action a month after Eames returns to active combat.

The coffin shimmers golden like a chrysalis.

But this time he knows, amidst salty grief and confusion and loss, that Felix is not sleeping.

Silver rain spatters, needle-sharp, against white headstones and black umbrellas.

Eames is twenty-four.

Twenty-four and heart-broken.

Twenty-four and world-weary.

Twenty-four and so fucking alone.

## V

Arthur learns to compartmentalize. He envisages his mind as a sleek, sterile room filled with purposefully-bland file cabinets. Each seemingly unremarkable metal drawer contains secrets: secrets about military life and machine guns, about assault and assassination, about infiltration and intelligence, about sex and suits, about theft and therapy.

And in a dusty and unused corner are the files that contain memories of childhood and adolescence, systematically and dispassionately tucked away but methodically alphabetized with color-coded tabs for potential future reference.

He does not believe in censoring history, in obliterating every speck of evidence pertaining to that skinny, gullible, whimsical boy with floppy hair and Buddy Holly glasses. After all, he is what he is due to a various and indeterminable number of factors and influences; some were genetic, some were environmental, others were acquired with age and experience. He is certainly not ashamed of those formative years.

But neither does he believe in wallowing in the past.

Because he is no longer that person.

The Arthur of here and now is feared and respected and fucking _loves_ what he does, loves it in a fiercely possessive way. Indeed, Cobb may have the reputation for being eccentric and overzealous and slightly cracked. But what does it say about Arthur that he would probably follow the man down to the depths of insanity, if that was what was required?

They create, they destroy, they rebuild. They are _kings_ or, presumptuous as it may be, gods.

Come what may and despite not knowing whether his lifestyle is curse or intoxication, death wish or deliverance, he never tries to walk away.

Arthur sleeps with a slim stained SIG Sauer under his pillow and slowly, ever so slowly, he thinks that he might be healing, forgetting, accepting.

***

Eames leaves the army after four years and three months. He takes with him an exemplary service record, twelve scars, three new tattoos and one creased and grimy photograph that has been folded and unfolded many times.

A soldier, face streaked with mud and fading camouflage paint, faces away from the camera; he is unknowingly caught in the act of removing a helmet to wipe at his brow. Sunlight illuminates his damp red-gold hair.

Having superb references, there is never any trouble finding work. After various, haphazard stints – a travelling salesman, a roadside caricaturist, a kitchen hand, a park ranger, a Santa Claus – he turns to theft.

He excels at it. After all, he thinks humourlessly, he has been invading other people's dreams since he was eighteen.

The pay is fanfuckingtastic, the perks are better, the nightmares are manageable. He never uses his name or anything that can identify him during jobs. He never sticks with one team. He is always prepared to cut his losses and run. He never becomes too attached.

It is best that way.

He adopts a lazy, mocking drawl that his mother would have hated, smokes far too much and paints furiously into the early hours of morning, brush strokes sloppy and colours vibrant. He does not use black or white. Initially cathartic, it eventually becomes essential.  
Canvases fill every possible space and half-empty bottles of Jack and Jim line the scuffed paint-splattered floor, silent bystanders.

Once a week, religiously, he walks into an art gallery (wherever he may be) and immerses himself in Géricault, Vermeer, Constable, Pissarro, van Gogh. Those are the days worth waking up for.

Over the years he flirts with everyone, sleeps with a handful, and doesn't fall in love. Each fledgling attempt at something more than a drunken fuck is transient and bittersweet, ending in a mess of raised voices and tears and stormy accusations of unfaithfulness that are not true, but perhaps not completely false either.

Because Eames dreams of coarse dark hair entwined in his fingers and elusive dimples, but wakes up to find slender waists and lipstick lips.

***

Once. Just once, he slips.

He dreams unaided by Somnacin, for the first time in years.

Arthur dreams in black, white and silence.

He walks miles on asphalt roads, consoling in their familiarity. He reaches a half-remembered somnolent city, and there are his projections, no longer faceless or nameless. They watch on curiously as he walks past, some smiling tentatively, others frowning. Tattoos glimmer under the pallid sun. Crooked teeth and stubble. Broad shoulders and full lips.

They are all Eames.

He shoots them.

Each and every one.

Between the eyes. In the chest. In the leg.

Arthur wakes up screaming, the SIG Sauer biting into his clammy, trembling palm. The hastily stitched up gash on his arm has torn open, oozing and wine-colored in the gloom. He throws up five times and even when his throat is parched and raw and inflamed he can't stop the dry retches that rack his frame and obscure his vision with sweat.

Cobb finds him later that morning, fitfully asleep on the cold tiles of the hotel bathroom, dried blood caked down one arm and fingers still wrapped around the slim stained pistol. He pries the gun out of Arthur's grip and finds, dread gnawing at his skin, that it is fully loaded.

The safety catch is off.

When Arthur wakes up groggily two days later, nestled in downy blankets, he doesn't remember any of it. A heavily pregnant Mal alternately fusses over and berates him, forcing scalding and bland soup down his protesting throat.

Listening from the other side of the door Cobb exhales once, long and deep, offering a simple but grateful prayer to someone (anyone) somewhere.

***

Though it barely registers at the time, Eames turns twenty-eight on a cold, drizzling September day- a day worth waking up for. He brushes his teeth, shrugs into a shabby overcoat, answers the ringing telephone (a long-time informant, congratulating him on another year survived and ordering him to come and visit her in Mombasa sometime, twat) and feeds the fish before leaving his apartment. He doesn't bother to lock the door.

There is a habitual itch in his veins: the ache for nicotine, the pounding headache beneath his eyelids, the tightness in his chest and the restless agitated flurry of his thoughts. He wants a cigarette, badly.

These days, Eames gambles to stave off the need. Both in dreams and reality, easily exchanging one vice for another. His pockets overflow with cracked poker chips, counterfeited or stolen. He toys with them constantly, incessantly, over and over and over between his dextrous fingers. It helps, but not much.

The Tate is comforting in its light and warmth. As he steps briskly through its rooms (each well-known and well-loved), he idly recognises the regular, familiar faces amidst the tourists and employees. There is the bearded man with vacant red-rimmed eyes hovering about the gift-shop, the petite teenage girl in a printed scarf sketching absently in room 22, the beautiful woman with dark curls and smoky eyes who traipses behind him into room T7.

He is standing in front of Fuseli's _The Shepherd’s Dream, from Paradise Lost_ , not really concentrating, when he becomes suddenly and acutely aware of someone standing beside him – close but not unsettlingly so.

“I have always liked this one,” the beautiful woman with dark curls and smoky eyes announces quietly, seemingly to no one in particular. She has an accent, throaty and lyrical. Eames thinks of Paris and, oddly, a Cambridge professor from another life.

The painting is magnificent, irrefutably, but he finds there to be something innately ominous about the supernatural creatures clustering about the slumbering shepherd, shrouded in the nightmarish darkness. To each his own, he supposes meditatively.

“How does it go again? _Fairy elves, whose midnight revels by a forest side, or fountain some belated peasant sees_ -”

She pauses significantly, turning to Eames with an appraising, almost challenging, tilt of her chin.

“ _Or dreams he sees_ ,” he concedes, with a small smile.

Her answering smile is radiant.

Later (it had been impossible to refuse her) Eames meets her at the little gallery café for strong black tea and gloriously warm scones.

It should be awkward or strange, but isn't. They discuss weather, psychology, Paris, Fuseli, children – she has a daughter, he has a godson. Though her dark eyes never drop their steady gaze, her fingers abstractedly fiddle with the complimentary toothpicks and sachets of sugar. She constructs walls and shapes and, bloody hell, Eames should have known, mazes.

He takes out the silver lighter from his overcoat pocket slowly, fingers mapping its dents and scratches and intricate filigree working. He flicks the thumbwheel once, twice. It doesn't light and the relief that bleeds into his skin is like salvation.

“Forget to mention you were an architect, darli-”

Eames fumbles with his tea and bites back a curse as it slops heavily into the saucer. He is startled at how easy it was to say to her and irritated that he is still (will always be) invariably defeated by that one fucking word.

She laughs, rich and musical and apologetic. Eames is enchanted and mercifully distracted.

“I apologise for my rudeness, but it was hard enough locating you that I was worried you would slip away if I revealed my true intentions. You are known for your elusiveness in our circles.”

Her eyes are sharp, bright and satisfied, a genuine smile curling on her lips.

It turns out to be the best day he has had in a long while, even though he knows that she is a highly-accomplished professional and simply objectively evaluating his suitability for a job.

So he is nonplussed when they stand up to leave, chair legs scraping on tile, for she kisses his cheek and murmurs, statement not question, “Until next week then, Mr. Eames.”

 

***

The windows are thrown open and the cool, jasmine-fragrant night air whispers through the house. Mal is singing along to the gramophone as she stirs the simmering Bolognese sauce while Miles tosses a simple green salad. They converse quietly, affectionately, Mal's laugh pealing out once or twice over the music.

Arthur is seated on the couch, barely awake. Lately he has been practically living at the warehouse, functioning on sparse handfuls of half-sleep and bitter sugary coffee. When they had found out, Mal had scolded and Cobb had sighed and before Arthur knew it, he was being bundled back to their home for a proper meal and decent night's sleep in the spare bedroom.

Phillipa (ten months, fair-haired, gorgeous) is sleeping nestled in the crook of his arm, small fists clutching at his shirt. She is also undoubtedly drooling on his inordinately expensive tie, he realizes despairingly, but kisses the top of her head quickly when no one is looking.

Cobb wanders over, glass of red wine in hand, leaning over to tousle the impossibly soft, baby-fine hair upon her head, smiling and relaxed.

Sometimes Arthur forgets how well Cobb has taken to married life and domesticity. This Cobb jokes, albeit badly, and takes days off and makes silly faces at his baby daughter; he is much more content than the intense, slightly unhinged man who had approached Arthur that seemingly ordinary summer day and whispered of dreams and ideas and pure creation.

“Mal’s pleased about something,” he notes with a sideways glance at Cobb.

It is good to hear her laugh.

They've all been particularly strained over the past few weeks, what with the search for a team member (rather, a team member capable of keeping up with them) yielding only incompetence, inefficiency and idiots. It is an unnecessary disadvantage to be short on resources for this job, one that they can't afford. Not when one mistake, one slip up, one _flicker_ of doubt in the mark's mind, can cost months of painstaking research, progress and their sanity – which is tenuous to begin with.

Cobb shrugs, “Something about paradise, British accents, surprises and ‘figured it out because of the toothpicks.’”

Seeing Arthur's eyes narrow, he grins. “I know, I know; you'd like a bit more specificity. As would I. But that's all I could get out of her. And I had to bribe her with chocolate for even that much.”

He seems particularly disgruntled about that.

Arthur's frown intensifies. It is uncharacteristic for Mal to be vague or secretive.

Cobb, sure, but not Mal.

Before he can say as much, Phillipa begins to stir fretfully, her chubby arms winding around his neck. Sighing, he rocks her gently and sings nonsense softly, as he has seen Mal do, until drowsy eyes close again and her grip slackens.

He resolutely ignores Cobb's bewildered, delighted smirk and thankfully escapes into the kitchen when he hears Miles call out that dinner is ready.

***

Three weeks later, Mal turns to him as they walk through cloudy puddles; his umbrella is red, her umbrella is blue. The early morning sky is lacerated with strips of pink and yellow and maybe even (blood) orange.

Much later ( ~~after her death~~ ), he will remember this fleeting moment in disjointed fragments: the white jasmine blossoms weaved into her dark hair, the salty scent of fish and chips on the wind, the awakening bruise kissed into her neck and her soft smile as she had said, “Would you consider working with us, Mr. Eames?”

## VI

Arthur looks up from his files. “Did you say something?”

Cobb pinches the bridge of his nose. “We've got ourselves a forger. He's coming in next week.”

Arthur nods. He has heard of them (of course) but has never worked with one as of yet. There aren't very many around, and even less that are worth their time.

“I think he'll give us the edge we need for this job.” Cobb stifles a yawn, rubbing the nape of his neck. “You said as much yourself; we need a new ruse, something different and innovative. A shapeshifter’s just the thing.”

“Is he any good?”

“He's well on his way to being the best in his discipline, according to Mal,” Cobb replies with a smile, for amongst the few things Arthur respects are Mal, brilliance and a challenge.

Arthur grunts, in grudging assent.

He is turning to leave when Arthur says offhandedly, far too flippantly. “So, what's his name?”

Cobb sighs, sensing the onset of a migraine. Thankfully, he is clocking off now. “Are you going to run a background check on him?”

“Maybe,” murmurs Arthur demurely as he flips open his notebook. Over the years Cobb has gathered this is his way of saying _fuck, yes, need you even ask?_

“It won't work, it's only an alias. Mal wouldn't tell me his real name. Which, by the sounds of this fellow, is probably yet another alias.”

Arthur just looks at him blankly till Cobb wearily gives in, too tired to argue. It is one of Arthur’s more taxing idiosyncrasies, probably in part responsible for his immense success in the role of point man; he has this all-consuming **need** to investigate _everyone_ within his radius or sphere of influence. Cobb has no desire to get in the way of that.

Arthur spends the whole week searching for information about the forger named Felix, but there is nothing worth mentioning.

Not one single fucking thing.

He calls up several contacts and informants in his extensive network. Even the few who have worked with him fail to provide more than a sketchy, half-assed profile of the man. Brown hair. Eyes that may be grey or blue or green; no one is really sure. Well-built. Imaginative. Charming. Evasive. Capable. Affable. Not entirely honest.

All entirely unhelpful.

Arthur buries his head in his hands after yet another phone call, this one to a high-profile diplomat in Turkey who had just giggled something about accents and lips.

So when Cobb smirks at him and victoriously mouths _told you so_ , Arthur just grits his teeth and ungraciously hands over the chocolate, telling himself he is most definitely not impressed.

***

He is facing away from Eames, poring over blueprints, pointing something out to a man who must be the infamous Dominic Cobb. He is wearing a tailored suit and is still thin, but wiry rather than skinny, muscle and sinew shifting between the clean-cut lines of his jacket.

Eames' fingers fly to the Dunhill lighter in his pocket and he swallows, throat dry. Because this is not a dream, black and white and just out of his reach. This is living, breathing reality and Eames is suddenly terrified (because what are the chances, what are the fucking chances) and hopeful and so bloody uncertain.

And then Mal is introducing him. He wonders, belatedly, how much she knows, _if_ she knows. No, surely not. But the thought remains, infective and persistent.

“Gentlemen, this is our forger, Mr. Eames – better known as Felix to some.”

Both men turn around. Cobb, taller and more genial than Eames had envisaged, immediately steps forward with a curious, welcoming smile. Eames shakes the outstretched hand, easily exchanging the usual courtesies of polite conversation.

On the other hand, Arthur (for this _**is**_ Arthur, that black-and-white boy from a still-vivid, never-forgotten dream), Arthur just _stares_ at him, jaw clenched and hands firmly hidden in his pockets. Once upon a time, Arthur would have flushed and squirmed and smiled, eyes crinkling and dimples deepening. This Arthur does none of these things, and Eames feels the difference keenly.

“Just Eames will do, darling,” he drawls, viciously prolonging the word, unsure whether he is addressing Mal or Arthur. It doesn't seem to matter.

This is an Arthur Eames does not know. This Arthur is well past seventeen years of age. This Arthur has fine lines around his mouth, whether from frowning or smiling Eames cannot be certain. This Arthur has fastidiously slicked back hair that no longer falls messily into dark, dark eyes.

This Arthur's mouth tautens and his eyes smoulder, but that's it.

It is so fucking anti-climactic, so devoid of any other perceptible emotion that Eames would laugh if he didn't feel so much like screaming and reaching out and clenching deceptive wrists that are not at all frail and saying _Arthur, Arthur_ and _you weren't waiting_ and _why did you run_ and _eight fucking years_ and _come here, you idiot_.

Mal clears her throat uncomfortably. “Eames, this is Arthur, our point man.”

Eames grins and watches in grim and immature satisfaction as Arthur stiffens, instantly on guard.

“A pleasure to finally meet you, Arthur.”

***

“Still dream, Arthur?” a voice purrs, lazy and insidious, familiar and too close - much too close.

Arthur bristles and instinctively reaches for the red die sitting atop his desk. Just like that, memories and feelings he has carefully and methodically shut away rush back, crowding the fringes of his vision, threatening to escape from beneath his hot and aching eyelids.

“I try not to if I can help it, Mr. Eames,” he manages to say and his voice is dismissive, curt, indifferent. So why is it that he feels so fucking exposed?

Eames stepped into the warehouse with Mal five hours ago and Arthur hasn't been able to stop looking at him since. Of course no one has noticed, not even far-too-observant Eames, because Arthur has learned subtlety over the years. For five hours, there had been a pounding roar in his head - _he's real, he's fucking real, Arthur you asshole, he's real._

Once upon a time, there were so many things Eames knew about him.

(He wonders if Eames knows them still?)

How the tips of Arthur's ears and the soles of his feet are ticklish, how he shivers when lips are pressed to the knob of bone at the nape of his neck, how he has a failing for almond biscuits and Lillian Gish, how he despises early mornings and the cold.

How he is delightfully accommodating when kissed.

“That's a shame,” Eames muses lightly, lips stretching into a tight, fake smile.

They exchange a few more stilted, reservedly civil comments. They talk about the job, the weather, Phillipa, the dreamscape; these neutral, safe topics eventually peter out into awkward, excruciating silence. Eames fiddles with a poker chip the whole while and it grates at Arthur, though he can find no plausible reason why it should.

Arthur wants to say many things, amongst them: _I'm sorry_ and _you're not smoking_ and _I came back_ and **_you're real_** and w _hy weren't you waiting_ and _I'm so fucking sorry_ and _what happens now_.

Instead, he simply nods mutely as Eames bids him good-night and melts into the darkness.

He drives through two red lights on the way home, stands under the shower for what seems like an age and crawls into bed, drained and inexplicably saddened.

Because Eames is real but Arthur hadn't believed it.

Because all those times, Eames had entered Arthur's dreams knowingly, willingly, **deliberately**.

Because it means Eames had accomplished something Arthur was never able to without Dom Cobb and a PASIV. Eames had escaped, aged eighteen, in his own way and in his own time and according to his own rules. Escaped into a world of black-and-white and silence and Arthur.

And in return? Arthur had shattered Eames’ carefully proffered heart and run away.

It is _that_ insight that makes the whole fucking mess worse.

***

They slip into a wary routine of banter and one-upmanship, Arthur contemptuously caustic and Eames coolly amused all the while. A fractious undercurrent of uneasy tension festers between them, electric and brooding.

Cobb skirts around them, prudently affecting complete obliviousness. Mal chews on the insides of her cheeks and frowns at them but wisely, intuitively, refrains from saying anything.

They never go under without either Mal or Cobb with them.

Sometimes, Eames thinks Arthur looks at him with something very much like regret in his eyes. Sometimes, Arthur thinks Eames will say something honest for once.

On particularly shitty mornings when the mark seems impenetrable and Mal has not smiled for days, Arthur might find a steaming mug of brewed coffee, his favorite newspaper and what looks like a muffin sitting innocently and unobtrusively atop his color-coded files and alphabetized paperwork.

The weight of Eames' gaze will prickle at his spine. He will sit down calmly, impassively sip the coffee (bitter, sugary and just right) and quickly hide behind the newspaper so that Eames won't see the perplexed, reluctant half-smile touching the corners of his mouth.

On particularly shitty mornings as Eames settles into a lawn chair with Cobb yelling out last minute instructions and not as much time as he would have liked to work on his forgery, a wholly unruffled Arthur will silently and calmly touch his hand and take the retractable cannula from his grasp.

Eames always gives in; he allows Arthur to roll back his cuff and swab the skin overlying the delicate network of vessels with alcohol, allows Arthur to insert the needle and merely grins like a fool when the tips of Arthur's ears redden and he says “Stop staring, Mr. Eames.”

Even so.

Mostly, Arthur is ruthless.

Mostly, Eames is insufferable.

Just because they can be.

But maybe, Arthur thinks as he sips his just-right coffee that smells faintly of cinnamon and Eames.

But maybe, Eames thinks as Somnacin thrills through his veins and the last thing he sees is Arthur.

Maybe that's all right too.

## Epilogue

Two months and seventeen days afterwards, ten years late but perhaps not too late, Arthur allows himself to dream in technicolor.

At the edge of a rotting wooden pier he finds a man with tanned skin and blue-green-grey eyes (older, but still as strikingly beautiful) who perhaps has been waiting all along, just not in the same place. Arthur could laugh at the absurdity of it all.

The man smiles crookedly, murmurs _about time you came back home, darling_ and leans in to kiss Arthur, hard and sweet, tasting of orange ice cream and blue sky.

Arthur trembles violently. His left hand is splayed against a warm and breathing chest, nails digging into whispering fabric, trying to almost claw into the paler inked skin he knows must be hiding beneath the patterned shirt.

He is not sure (has never been sure) if he is pulling this man towards him or pushing him away.

The fingers of his right hand tighten slowly, ever so slowly, around a slim, stained pistol.


End file.
